The weasel evaded our efforts to trap it and went on to kill a banty hen and all her chicks; then it slipped back to the underworld, through whatever steaming crack it had emerged from, never to torment us again.

I agree, but with banty-rooster senators like Oklahoma's Coburn "blaming it on the federal government" you have to wonder exactly what logic is being played out so consistently among these people so mobilized by their fear that they would risk jail to demonstrate by brandishing serious weaponry in the presence of the President of the United States.

There was nothing particularly heroic about him to look at or listen to; he was, at 61, a banty rooster of a man with question-mark ears, a mangled nose, a barber-college haircut and an east Texas drawl as thin and sharp as wine gone to vinegar.

The day is different now, grave and threatened, rain-hurried, and he watches Mays standing in center field looking banty in all that space, completely kid-size, and he wonders how the guy can make those throws he makes, whirl and sling, with power.